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Impulse bought today: a Cowon D2+ (personal music player: a little pricey as far as these things go, but rated for 52 hours of music playback, and supports OGG and FLAC) and a Aluratek Libre (e-ink reader: fairly inexpensive as far as these things go, and relatively small/lightweight, and I’m a sucker for anything named “Libre”). Both devices seem capable of charging via USB. I also went shopping for bug spray. The lady behind the counter advised me that a typical usage pattern involves putting on spray in the morning and in the evening, roughly corresponding to a bottle of spray per person per week. That corresponds roughly to 116 bottles of bug spray — not logistically feasible, even a little bit. My new game plan: lots of long clothing.

A part of me recognizes that I’m planning according to fear, and that most of the thing I’m bringing I’m not going to ever use or need. That doesn’t make me any less afraid, but it does put things into perspective. I just hope I haven’t crossed the 80 lbs limit for checked luggage yet (of which my actual suitcases probably take up 15 lbs..).

So there you go. Hope all that helps. Really, there’s no need to stress as you can either find things you forget here or have them shipped from home. Good luck with everything, and see you all when you get here.

This is from the packing guide I got by email (as part of a nine-.doc email). Packing has been something of a focus for me over the last few weeks; it’s a little late to say “there’s no need to stress”, especially since I’ve seen four Organization-endorsed packing lists already.

On the other hand (d’un autre côté), this advice is probably pretty sage. There’s no way to prepare for something like this. You can buy things in an attempt to make yourself feel better (as I have), but since you don’t even know where in the country you’re going to go, you’re trying to predict something unknowable. I’m trying not to stress, but the entire Organization process so far has been almost designed to produce stress, from badly-designed forms to arbitrary processes and incoherent instructions demanding answers to obscure and invalid questions. It’s kind of hypocritical to turn around and say “It’ll be fine! Don’t worry!..”